Raven, Legacy Contract

[DragonSong]

__________________QUICK STATS
Name Raven Verns
Age 24
Gender Female
Species Human with fae ancestry
Ethnicity Libran
Height 5'5"
Orientation Bisexual
Occupation Shop Owner
Residence Libran trade district

__________________IN-DEPTH STUFF

Physical Description
As the rather cliched name might suggest, Raven has jet black hair with hints of blue and green to it that occasionally shimmer in the light. Her eyes are bright green, and her skin is naturally tanned and smooth, free of any blemish or mark--

Well. Save for the winding, inky black tattoo that starts on her right wrist and curves its way up her arm in a series of flowing, looping lines, almost like some sort of script, to end just passed her shoulder and just beneath her collar bone.

Of course she typically wears high collars and long sleeves, so most people don't see that.


Personality
Almost by necessity, Raven is a relatively open and friendly person. She knows her neighbors all by name, and even if they aren't necessarily friends, they are at least amiable with one another.

If left to her own devices, Raven would really prefer to curl up with some nice tea and a good book--paper or datapad, she doesn't much care which, though of course physical books are rarer and rarer nowadays. She likes her solitude and she likes quiet, but she's always willing to leave her mini-sanctuary in the back room of her shop to lend a helping hand when needed.


Magic/Abilities
Raven is a witch--she doesn't call herself a "mage", as she believes that implies some sort of internal power that she doesn't really have. Her magic comes from the world around her: plants, stones, even certain metals all have a distinct power, and Raven's real talent comes in knowing how to access and channel that power.

She doesn't exactly advertise these abilities, as they might be a bit too close to psionics for the government's comfort.

She has another power as well, a darker one, passed down in her bloodline since the days of Serendipity. She never speaks of it, and not even she truly understands what it's capable of.


Relationships
Her great-aunt Lucina is the only surviving member of her family. She raised Raven, and the young witch loves her very much.

Raven has a sort of...familiar that occasionally appears around the shop. A massive black bird with piercing eyes that seem far too intelligent. She never seems quite at ease when the raven is around though, and only refers to him as "Shade".


History
Raven has always assumed that her mother was drunk when she named her. That or just...feeling cruel.

She never really had the chance to learn which, because she hardly saw her mother as a child--or even well into her teen years, honestly. Valeria Verns never spent much time in the little magick shop that her aunt ran, and when she did visit it was always briefly. She never seemed to be able to stay in the same room with her daughter for longer than a few hours, and even those were always tense and awkward.

Lucina told Raven it was because she felt guilty. By necessity of a Contract made millennia ago, the Verns women were obligated to carry on their matrilineal line--but each Verns mother knew the curse that she would one day bring on her daughter, and each one of them dealt with the guilt different.

It was a logical enough explanation, but privately Raven always wonder if it wasn't just because Valeria blamed her daughter's existence for her own inevitable death.

A death that came was Raven turned eighteen, as it always must. Valeria had returned to the shop, to the tiny flat that Lucina and her daughter lived in above it, for the last time. And for the first time, when she told her daughter "I'm sorry", Raven actually believed her.

Raven has always wondered how the Shade knew when midnight really was out in the middle of the void, but somehow it did. Perhaps demons have a firmer way of marking time.

Regardless, her mother's death came the precise moment that Raven entered her eighteenth year; the binding mark of the Contract faded from Valeria's arm with her last breath, and with Raven's next she watched the tattoo appear on her own skin.


__________________THREAD TRACKER
Current Threads


Complete Threads
That Old Familiar Feeling